The participation of three well-known Low-Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC) UAS Service Suppliers (USS) marks a positive step towards painting a path forward for the FAA as they consider what the final standard for Remote ID will be. The importance of the collaboration is important as consensus viewpoints among stakeholders in the industry allow the FAA to make confident choices before penning the rule.
“Before such wide-scale drone operations as autonomous deliveries can take place, we need to ensure that regulators ? and the public ? can easily assess whether or not a particular drone belongs to a good actor or requires intervention,” said Ben Marcus, Co-Founder and Chairman of AirMap. “Network-based remote identification applications like AirMap’s Drone Aware, augmented by local broadcast solutions when available, help airspace managers enforce aviation regulations while cultivating public trust in drone and also protecting the privacy of drone operators.”
Any USS that would like to join in using the system can clone or download the API on GitHub. The open source approach to the system is intended to foster innovation and improve stability as Co-Founder of Kittyhawk.io Joshua Ziering noted. “Transparency, inclusion and interoperability are the only way the industry is going to move forward. Like the early days of the internet, and even more recently, we’ve seen walled-garden approaches are rife with problems and slow innovation. Industry leaders collaborating around an open source framework provides the speed, agility, and transparency to solve challenges quickly and efficiently.” said Ziering.
During the demonstration observers were able to track the flights and of drone operations within their vicinity in real time. Operators identities are verified and protected through their USS providers and only the relevant safety and drone identification data are broadcast to the network.
Networked remote ID has flexibility advantages over technologies like ADS-B which operates on fixed bands between transponders. Comparatively, the networked approach allows new standards to implemented without uprooting infrastructure. It is possible both methodologies would be considered acceptable by the FAA to work individually or in tandem.